Congratulations on a nice team race. Hard to beat first from the break and first from the field!

Mikes move lapped the field. I finished from the chase group. Not field.

I didn't think about this during the race, but it felt really good to roll that deep in a Cat 3 race. After racing with Speedwell, It truly is a privilege to race with such a great and talented group. It adds a layer to racing that is hard to grasp when you have few or zero teammates in the race. I really like where we're going with this.

Okay, didn't catch that critical point of info...which leads me to a point of tactics and rules when talking crit races. If there were any Kissena's in the field that Mike's group lapped, they have every right to work for their teammate who lapped them. They're not supposed to drop off the main group to help pace their guy up to the field, if the breakaway hasn't made the connection on their own.

However, I have seen this plenty in the days of team Saturn and Mercury and Shaklee, often the team, when they get word that their man is coming around to field again, they will drop to the back of the back, and wait for their guy to connect. Once the connection happens, they bust their balls to get their guy straight to the front and out of harms way.

It can be confusing when a break rejoins the field, and the break subsequently scatters. You are only sprinting against your breakmates for the win, but keeping track of them after the lapping occurs can be tough. Hence it's important to just get to the front straight away and continue racing as if you are out to beat everyone in the field (even if you don't have to to take the win.)

Naturally, with only 26 guys in the field, minus Eric's chase group, it's not going to be too difficult to keep track of who's who and where they are.

wow. congratulations.

Yeah, Marc brings up a really good point. Two fields got lapped today, and that's only the ones I saw. Mike didn't get any help when his group lapped the last chase group (at that point there was no "field," only chase groups). They simply let the break go by and didn't interfere. Not the worst thing in the world, but theoretically, we had a couple folks positioned to help Mike for the finish.

Seriously, I think this is a real take-home lesson for all of us. It might not happen often at FBF or in the park, but in true crits, groups get lapped by breaks. And since we want to be the best team around, we need to know that in crits, we are allowed to mix it up with breaks that lap us. Shamelessly and without worry. And if our teammate is in that break, we can and absolutely should help him a great deal. The implications of this are many, one of which is that if you know you have guys up the road in a strong break, your job is not done. You sit in and recover in case he catches you, in which case you're a set of fresh legs in his service, whether it be for a leadout, or just a ride to the front.

But really, I hope everyone groks this one thing:

IN A CRIT, IF YOUR GROUP GETS LAPPED BY THE BREAK, YOU CAN AND PROBABLY SHOULD MIX IT UP WITH THE BREAK.

Race report from the 4/5 race:

Jim and I talked strategy in the car on the way there. Jim had raced this before, and after some discussion we agreed that a late, pre-sprint attack could have a good chance, since even a slight gap at the last corner meant almost certain victory. So the plan was to communicate throughout the race, but if it was all together at the end, I was to attack on the last lap and try to get to the last corner with a couple seconds' gap. Jim was to secure a good position in the chase and follow wheels to the sprint.

Things went about like that until Jim flatted about 20 minutes in. Too bad, too.

I followed a couple moves from guys I know have won recently, but nothing even remotely got away. For the most part I was top-15 wheels (out of like 60 maybe?), but now and then I experienced some difficulty for one reason or another and found myself too far back, clawing for wheels. My legs felt pretty flat going in, but this was not an easy race by any means.

So my three or so moves came back, and finally we crossed the start-finish with the bell ringing. The jackasses on the front (I will leave their team unnamed) put themselves in the wrong gutter, so I could move up a downright peaceful side-draft from mid-pack to about fourth wheel with minimal effort -- on the outside no less. So as I did that, these guys approached Turn 1 with a terrible inside line, and on top of that touched their brakes. My momentum carried me right off the front even before the turn, so even though this was about 500 meters before I planned to attack, I had a huge chance handed to me on a silver platter by Siggi's (oops). So I basically launch my momentum into a seated sprint into Turn 1 (of only three -- what would have been Turn 1 was just a sweeping curve before this point), hammering all the way through the ideal line.

I'm somewhere beyond 1 km out now, and I would look back only once for the rest of the race.

As I exit the turn about six inches from the right side of the road, I get out of the saddle and basically do my field sprint, getting me halfway to Turn 2. I settle into a seated sprint again, and venture one single, solitary glance under my arm. What I saw: a large sprinter 10 feet back and closing, then A BIG GAP behind him. For whatever reason, the field let us steal a few seconds on them, just what I needed. I tried to hold the big fella off, but he got in my draft and came around just in time for Turn 2. He took a shitty line and promptly rode off the side of the road into the mud. Gone. I took the good line and entered the slightly uphill headwind section. If I could make it through this to the final turn with even a 1.5 second gap, I win.

Standard race report until now.

But after this point, I'm in uncharted territory. When I looked back around ten seconds ago, I had a two or three second gap on the field, and the sprinter who caught me just rode off course. So it was just me and the corner. Daylight. Real, true away-ness only ~400 meters from the line, and only 200 meters from the crucial final corner. I wanted to look back but that was impossible. Hope ahead, but mostly fear behind. Chewing bar tape. I briefly entertained the actual possibility of winning. The guy on the yellow Giant who won Orchard Beach entered my peripheral vision about 30 feet before the final turn.

So, where was I...
Ah yes. Mike goes and Zeb as well. They use Mike's patented "just roll away from them attack" and it looks good. Then Ross Baldwin from Speedwell and another guy attack to get across. We didn't have someone covering that chase (our real mistake).

The break of four get established and now my goal is to bridge to it. The pack is chasing a bit and are actually keeping the pace relatively high and there is no ideal place to attack. They bunched up once coming out of turn one and that's when I should have gone as the break was still close enough to get across to. But, I didn't.

I waited a bit and my memory is a bit blurry here. I think there was a group of two that went up the road that I bridged to and then stuck with for a couple of seconds. I then launched from them with the idea of bridging to the break. I didn't make it. Bryan Fried (SixCycle) was trying to get across to me and had a gap. I saw I wasn't going to make it as quickly as I wanted, so I slowed down. Bryan tried to get me to work with him and I was like "I can't chase my break." We came back to the field.

In a bit, Bryan and some other guys jumped and Rene covered the move. It looked promising, so I bridged (this time before the gap got too big). Once we had an established gap, I told Rene that he could work. Then I joined in too. We got out of sight of the field, but we were also losing time to the break.

Eventually, we lost a guy I raced with at Bound Brook. Down to four. Rene got dropped too. Interesting thing about the chase, we were all big - Rene being the 30lb underweight guy, but the big guys couldn't / wouldn't pull hard on the downhill stretch. I told them at one point that we're all fat, this is the easy part. It didn't help.

So, down to 3 in the chase. We get 7 laps to go. Then with 3 to go, the gap is down to 18 seconds. I tell my companions that I'm not working anymore. They understood. I'm not sure that they understood that I would take the top spot from our group. I had been gapping them all day whenever I took a hard pull or kept my speed up out of turn one (the sweeping lefthander). So, on the bell, I launched through Turn One and came in easily for fifth. All to find that Mike had WON!

So, the race paid three deep (boo), but we got two pineapples and a cantaloupe. WDC did the cutting. Ripe fruit rocked...

congrats all - excellent results and great reports!

High fives all round!

Wait . . . Jeff . . . Did you fAll asleep before Posting the end of your report?

Whappen!?!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the guy on the yellow Giant (Alex Binkley on the Gennaro Restaurant team) had the peleton strung out behind him. I came to the turn probably tenth wheel with no gas for a field sprint so I got out of the way.

always nice crushing it with the dudes.

here's my quick report from the back:

i knew this was going to be a good course for Michael and Eric. the former cause he's a crusher and was raring to go from the gun, the latter because he was gapping me just going through the turns in our warm-up laps. with Joe, Vlad, Malcolmson and Rene in tow, i knew we would be good. mike countered an early move i made, sneaking away quietly with one dude in the first 15 minutes. two other guys were soon bridging up and they connected after awhile. with four ahead, we went into full on blocking mode, stuffing a kissena into the second or third wheel on every lap and chasing down the breaks and bridge attempts.

the field was attacky, and even with 5 of us behind the break, a group of 6 eventually broke off. eric and rene got in it. from there on, it was Malcolmson, Vlad and I screwing up all the bridge attempts from what remained of the field to give our dudes breathing room. this was hard work, but it felt really good.

around minute 35, i was second wheel following some BIG dude through turn 3. just as i was thinking to myself "damn! this guy can really corner" he slid out. for a moment i was sure i was going down, but i managed to sneak around the inside of him, and thankfully, his bike clattered away from me rather than into me. the ensuing skidding correction brought be back over to the right and into the gravel. i skidded to a stop, completely freaked, put in two thrashing pedal strokes to get going again, but then turned around to see three dudes (and a kissena) sprawled in the ditch. my policy on crashes is that if a teammate is down, and i see it happen, i stop. i went back, pulled the bikes off the road and made sure everyone could feel their toes before i let them get up.

the Kissena was Vlad, who was immediately bouncing up all "put me back in, coach!" i looked at the giant raspberry on the side of his face and told him he hit his head and wasn't going back in. his reply was, "hey! you're right! i do feel sort of nauseous!" plus, he had a hematoma on his right calf that looked like a second head was about to pop out. we got him to the ambulance for ice, at which point Jeff and Jim told me to get my ass back into the race. I rolled up to the start/finish, told the ref what happened and got into the chase group as they passed.

the next 20 minutes was more of the same - following the surges, elbowing into the 2nd and 3rd wheel and generally making sure that our two breaks had room to breathe. it was close for a while, as Ragot's bunch dangled less than 200 in front of us, but once we saw the lap cards (7 to go) they were looking good again.

somewhere in this, Malcolmson bridged up to two danglers and suddenly there were three groups up the road. with 5 to go, i followed the fiercest attack yet from Juan Aracena (in the murdered-out black kit) which brought the group back to John's trio, but also gassed me. i wasn't physically spent, but i had a brain fart and stopped pedaling for a moment. suddenly, they were 50 yards up and my chance of catching them was over. i guess i could have ridden it in, but the blocking had left me feeling very tired and sufficiently satisfied with my contribution to justify rolling to the S/F and watching the last few laps.

Mike's sprint was a delicious drag race - he won by not giving up, waiting for his momentum and his opponents fatigue to kick in. as he wrote, he didn't overtake ross until less than 10 to go - very excited. Ragot must have attacked his group on the back of the course, because he rolled in solo for 5th. Watching John sprint for 7th from the remains fo the group made me wish i had stuck it out to give him a leadout.

beers and fruit in the parking lot really made my day - great times, all.

the spoils

So, to clarify:

1st from the break
1st from the chase
1st from the field

At the end of the day, it's NTS bros.
(Not too shabby)

Damn dudes. Nicely done!
(Vlad, no "chicks-dig-scars" pictures?)

As requested

Ouch. That picture has a very bruce willis look to it - or is it just me?

no - you're right

vlad was totes smoking a ciggy and quipping in a husky voice when i found hime

that's a good look for you, dude!

I took a couple, but they're not great: hmm... technical difficulties.

Yippee-ki-yay mothereffers

Vlad - nice artistic touch with the empty bike rack in the background.

What did the EMTs or Docs say ?

Nice reports! And I agree, Vlad, you should keep that look. Totally tough as nails. Get a tattoo of it, ala Tyson.

Posted By: JoshuaC
What did the EMTs or Docs say ?

They gave me a couple of ice packs, put some band-aids on my finger, and told me to go to a hospital if I got dizzy or nauseous. I was fine after the crash. I've still got a milnute headache, but I'm good to go. I might go see my doctor tomorrow if I can get an appointment, but I feel like, if anything, it may have been a mild concussion. Nothing maje.

Posted By: Jeff Owens Get a tattoo of it, ala Tyson.

I was thinking more along the lines of this:

Vlad,

Calf hematoma. I know what that's like. You're going to get sick of compression socks but they are going to be your friend.

Mike & Eric

Sounds like some good riding, and domination of the Cat 3 field.

Whitey,

Disappointing ending but that sounded like a good attack but it is always hard to hold off a motivated field with a rabbit up the road.

@ Dan: wait.. what? Vlad has to wear a sock on his head?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxpyZtzvTJ0

Posted By: WilliamDC plus, he had a hematoma on his right calf that looked like a second head was about to pop out. we got him to the ambulance for ice, at which point Jeff and Jim told me to get my ass back into the race.

I would not recommend a compression sock on your head, but I would recommend for the calf hematoma. One of my favorite bizarro cycling injuries. The face raspberry is awesome and great to go to work sporting, but nothing is better for grossing people out like a giant pool of blood massed under your skin.

So about Vlad's crash.

#1: I don't think I ever said "heal up buddy" or "feel better", and I think it because Vlad was just like "yeah, whatever man I crashed on my face no big deal." Tough dude. I'd have been crying and looking for some sympathy and scoring some free beers due to that injury.

#2: If he get's a tat, it really needs to be David Clinger style:

http://www.dailycrank.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/clinger1.jpg

Nice work Mike and Eric... I didn't quite make it around Juan Aracena in the sprint.

Props to William for keeping it pro. Vlad, hope you're head is ok today.

One observation: with a field that small and with our numbers advantage, I wasn't actively blocking. I felt it was fairer and better etiquette to just sit near the front and let the other teams work. I would have thrown in an attack if we were pulling things back, but other solo riders were doing a good job of that. Not blocking gives us more good will and respect from the other teams and they'll be more likely to help us out in other races. And, hey, who knows, maybe Siggi's won't have a hissy.